Championship Gaming Series World Final: Birmingham brings it home

Months of intense competition came to a conclusion with Monday night’s CGS World Final match between the San Francisco Optx and Birmingham Salvo. These two teams were all that remained of the original eighteen that began season two of the Championship Gaming Series. It has been a long road for both franchises. San Francisco barely got into the semi-finals. It took a dramatic win over 3D.NY in the wildcard qualifier to secure their place in further competition. Meanwhile, Birmingham earned its place in the final only after a narrow one-point, overtime victory against the Carolina Core.

Tonight’s climatic match began with Forza 2. Birmingham’s Daveyskills took the lead after slamming into San Francisco’s Sackamonjaro at the start of the race. A determined Sackamonjaro kept close and attempted to knock Daveyskills out with a collision early in the second lap. Daveyskills nevertheless managed to stay ahead and finished the race in first place. Sackamonjaro followed in second, with Birmingham’s Picaso and San Francisco’s Miximup finishing in third and fourth respectively. Birmingham now held an early 5-2 lead over San Francisco.

Birmingham’s player Bazza scored two goals early in the first half of the FIFA 08 match. He knocked the ball into Stermy’s net for a third time, but the goal was declared invalid because Bazza’s player was off-sides. Stermy finally got on the board after scoring a goal with only seconds left in the first half. Despite strong vocal support from San Francisco’s fans, Stermy could not tie the game in the second half. As a result, Bazza won the match, 2-1.

Birmingham led San Francisco 7-3 going into Dead or Alive 4 (DOA4) female competition. Birmingham’s SarahLou faced off against San Francisco’s MVP Vanessa on the DWA Coliseum. The match started out badly for SarahLou, as Vanessa won three rounds in a row. It looked as if Vanessa would win the fourth round, until SarahLou pinned her in a corner and pulled out a narrow victory. The two fighters then swapped wins in the fifth and sixth rounds, bringing the score to 4-2. Vanessa mopped the floor with SarahLou in the seventh round and won the match, 5-2. This victory allowed San Francisco to shrink Birmingham’s lead to 9-8.

The DOA4 male fight was a mirror-match with both Birmingham’s semi-final savior Messy and San Francisco’s NinjaCW playing as that lethal senior citizen, Gen Fu. It became abundantly clear that both fighters were equally skilled, as evidenced by the 3-3 tie going into the seventh round. From there Messy pulled out two straight wins and beat NinjaCW, 5-3.

As with many matches this season, the outcome of Counter-Strike: Source (CS:S) would decide the overall victor. The match took place on de_inferno with San Francisco playing the first half as the terrorists. While the game started competitively, Birmingham ultimately took the first half, 6-3. With the overall score at 20-14, San Francisco needed an 8-1 score or better in the second half to win the championship. Unfortunately for San Francisco, Birmingham held a 2-1 lead at the end of the third round. Playing any further was pointless because the result was clear — Birmingham had won the 2008 World Championship with a final score of 22-15.

In addition to the Mountain Dew World Champion Trophy, Birmingham received $500,000 in prize money. San Francisco takes home $150,000 for being this year’s runner-up. Birmingham’s pair of expert racers, Daveyskills and Picaso, received the World Finals MVP award. The Forza 2 champs share a bonus of $25,000.